MAP: A Republican in Arlington, Once Upon a Time

Veteran Rep. Frank Wolf (R) announced this morning that he was declining to seek re-election. First elected in 1980 after unseating a Democrat, his district, once based in Arlington and inner Fairfax Counties in Virginia and stretching out to then rural Loudoun County, his district marched steadily westward, fleeing the increasingly Democratic inner suburbs. A Republican representing Arlington in Congress–a completely unthinkable scenario now in a county that lacks a single Republican elected official on any level

Below is a quick map I prepared comparing his first 1980 district with his now second to last district in 2013. The purple area contains overlap, the red area parts of the district lost since the 80s, and the blue area gained since then, using this excellent trove of historical boundary data from UCLA.

Here is the same map, featuring the current district after the 2010 redistricting: